Mrs Affleck - This is London

Samuel Adamson’s new version of Little Eyolf transports the Allmers family from the fjords of Norway in 1894 to the Kent Coast in 1955, renaming them Affleck en route but staying true to Ibsen’s basic themes. Other characters’ identities are also changed and a couple more are added to this emotionally charged adaptation in which the guiltridden relationship between a husbandand wife (Alfred and Rita – the only ones to retain their original names) is ripped even further by the death of their crippled young son.

Back from a stay in the Highlands, Angus Wright’s distant, tortured Alfred has abandoned the book he was writing and vowed to concentrate on the education of their son, Ollie. Meanwhile Claire Skinner’s immaculate Rita, posed elegantly in her pristine grey kitchen (designed by Bunny Christie) looks as perfect – and as untouchable – as a 50’s advert. But her soignée exterior belies a desperately possessive and unhappy woman, physically rejected by her husband and shamefully resentful of the child who’s damaged, recriminatory presence – and, later, absence – stands like a barrier between them.

Marianne Elliott’s production reveals all the painfully tormented disquiet of the near incestuous intimacy between Alfred and his half-sister Audrey (Naomi Frederick) but, well acted though it is, Adamson’s sometimes awkward script neither improves nor illuminates the original.

Cottesloe

Stovepipe This is London

The new Westfield mall in Shepherds Bush may look tempting with its shiny shops and restaurants, but there are more substantial riches to be found beneath the older West 12 shopping centre just across the road. In collaboration with the National and BushTheatres, HighTide has taken over a basement space beneath a supermarket, transforming it into a post-war landscape full of conflict and contrasts.

Written by former journalist Adam Brace and given a striking, fluid, promenade production by Michael Longhurst, this involving, tense and well-researched new play looks at the world of the mercenary, the ex-soldiers who, via private military companies, sell their services – and perhaps their lives – for $600 a day.

A succession of drapes is stripped away to reveal location after location – from smart ‘Rebuild Iraq’ conference hall to the airport run where Eddie (Niall MacGregor) and ex-para Alan (Shaun Dooley) see their mate burnt to a crisp in an armoured vehicle, and from the subdued calm of a Welsh chapel to the swanky Amman hotel where Eddie picks up a Russian prostitute before disappearing without trace.

Unobtrusively ushered from scene to scene, the audience serves sometimes as extras populating the stages of Alan's search for his missing friend, sometimes more conventionally as mere onlookers.

The remaining four actors (including Eleanor Matsuura as a ball-busting entrepreneur and Sargon Yelda, equally impressive as her Iraqi interpreter) seamlessly swap accents and costumes to play an international cast of characters and, although the structure occasionally confuses, the dialogue, staging, performances and atmospheremake this subterranean journey well worth catching.

West 12, The Broadway, Shepherds Bush until 26th April




ngsley

Berlin Hanover Express *** TNT

Wednesday 01 April 2009

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Berlin Hanover Express

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 27 March 2009 16:55 GMT. It was last updated on Wednesday 01 April 2009 10:19 GMT.

Ian Kennedy Martin’s new play starts promisingly enough with a couple of officials closeted away in the office of the neutral Irish legation in Berlin in late 1942. Mallin has his nose buried deep in the files, hunting for evidence that one of their former colleagues was a spy, whilst the younger diplomat O’Kane is far more interested in trying to tell him yet another joke he really doesn’t want to hear.

The interaction between this ill-matched pair yields some entertainment, but the playwright has more serious issues to address. His main intention is to question Ireland’s neutrality at a time of war by putting the loyalties – as well as the integrity - of both men to the test when Nazi officer Kollvitz delves into the background of their German housekeeper Christe. It’s potentially fertile ground, but this pedestrian, predictable drama rarely rings true despite Kennedy Martin’s longstanding TV credentials.

Sean Campion is excellent as the resolutely blinkered Mallin, turning a blind eye to the reality of the death camps further down the railway line, and contrasts effectively with Owen McDonnell’s chipper O’Kane. But, despite the intensity of one deeply uncomfortable, voyeuristic scene which highlights the cruel authority exerted by the Nazis, these actors really deserve something meatier to work with.
Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 (020 7722 9301) until 4th April £25-£15 (under 26’s £10)

Kafka's Ape **** -TNT

Friday 27 March 2009 16:50 GMT

Kathryn Hunter goes ape in Colin Teevan’s adaptation of Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy. Though not the first time that this versatile actress has played a member of the opposite sex, on this occasion she takes to the stage in top hat and tails with the mannerisms of a male monkey breaking through the humanised surface
So, addressing the audience directly, Red Peter relates how he was shot and captured on the Gold Coast, then transported to Europe in a cruelly cramped cage – interrupting his story to offer a banana and groom the hair of a front row spectator. He tells how (in the belief that his only chance of survival was to copy his captors) he learnt to behave like a human – spitting, scratching and drinking rum just like the sailors on board ship – before making the choice between life in the zoo or the music hall.
Hunter swings chimp-like from a wall, or bounds, hunched, across the stage, arms swinging, then fixes the audience with a penetrating, quizzical stare. It’s a remarkable solo performance which renders Red Peter’s story both funny and touching, a sad satire of assimilation which leaves him uneasily trapped in the no man’s land between simian and sapiens.

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Kafka's Ape

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 27 March 2009 16:50 GMT.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (0207 922 2922) Until 9th April (£17.50, £10 under 26)

Deep Cut **** TNT

Thursday 19 March 2009

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Deep Cut

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Thursday 19 March 2009 14:12 GMT.

Over the last 15 years, this intimate theatre has built an excellent reputation for its “Tribunal Plays,” thought-provoking dramatisations from Nuremburg to Guantanamo of some of the most controversial inquiries of recent decades.

Philip Ralph’s exposure of the apparent cover-ups and incompetency of the investigations into the cause of death of four trainees at the Deepcut army barracks in Surrey, between 1995 and 2002, is, like its precursors, based on verbatim accounts and original source material. But, tellingly, on this occasion there is no sense of a courtroom format – hardly surprising as there has never been a full judicial inquiry. Yet on the evidence presented, the verdict of suicide in all four cases seems, to say the least, grossly inept.

Focussing mainly on the family of Cheryl James (a lively 18 year old who, it was ruled, shot herself whilst on guard duty) Ralph shows her parents fighting to understand exactly what happened to their adopted daughter and being thwarted at every turn by the army, the police, the justice system and the government. Evidence also comes from one of Cheryl’s contemporaries who (whilst acknowledging the challenges of the training environment) saw no sign of a mindset that might have led to her taking her own life.

But the most damning testimony comes from forensic scientist Frank Swann whose refusal to testify without an independent public inquiry seems, with hindsight, to have been a serious error of judgement. From his analysis of the pattern of splattered blood to the impossible angle of a fatal shot, his findings alone should be enough to reopen every one of these cases and start the process of finding the answers to the questions which still remain painfully – and shamefully - unanswered.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 (020 7328 1000) to 4th April (£10.00-£20.00)

On the Waterfront **** TNT

Friday 13 March 2009 16:55 GMT

Like Arthur Miller’s contemporaneous stage play A View From the Bridge, Elia Kazan’s gritty 1954 film was influenced by the anti-communist witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Both works explore the predicament of conflicting loyalties, transposing events to the harsh, New York quayside, but Steven Berkoff’s innovative and highly stylised production of the movie is a far more expressionistic affair than the equally fine, more naturalistic revival of Miller’s drama currently playing a couple of streets away.
The New York docks are conjured by a bleak, toppling two-dimensional Statue of Liberty, the golden-flamed torch replaced by a longshoreman’s threatening grappling hook. A slow-motion chorus morphs from intimidated dockers, to rain-coated mobsters, then transforms itself into a loft packed with cooing, jutting pigeons.
Against this stark backdrop, Terry Malloy (the failed boxer immortalised on screen by Marlon Brando and here given a performance of swaggering inarticulacy tinged with growing vulnerability by Simon Merrells) is torn between loyalty to his brother and the union boss Johnny Friendly and his love for the sister of the man whom he unwittingly delivered into their murderous hands.
Played out with the intensity of a Greek tragedy, and with Berkoff himself a menacing central presence as the corrupt Friendly, this is a gripping reinvention of a classic which grows in power and poignancy right through to the final, moodily atmospheric curtain call.
Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, SW1 (0845 481 1870) to 25th April (£15-£45, some £10 day seats available)

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On the Waterfront

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 13 March 2009 16:55 GMT.

Over There *** TNT

Friday 13 March 2009 17:02 GMT

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Over There

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 13 March 2009 17:02 GMT.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, playwright Mark Ravenhill suggests that the merging of the two cultures and ideologies wasn’t a completely welcome – or easy – event. His initially intriguing new play (influenced by interviews conducted in Berlin and part of the Royal Court’s season of works about Germany) brings together Karl and Franz, two young men brought up on different sides of the wall.

The twist is that they’re identical twins who were separated as toddlers. Whilst their mother took Franz to grow up in the comparative consumerist opulence of the West, Karl stayed behind in the East with his socialist dad. Now, both their parents are dead (symbolism looms heavily throughout) and there is no need for passes and permits if they want to spend time together.

Karl gradually takes on more and more of his sibling’s characteristics, wearing an identical suit and becoming a second father to his little nephew (portrayed by what, from where I was sitting, looked like a bright yellow sponge – representing, presumably, a new, unfettered generation ready to soak up influences from all sides). Despite the surface advantages, though, he cannot find contentment in an overwhelmingly materialistic, reunified society.

The performances from real life twins Luke and Harry Treadaway are excellent as, right from their first brief meeting in 1986, they eerily finish each other’s sentences. But, by the time they’d stripped to their respective red and green underpants (with Karl’s body smeared in a surfeit of ketchup and chocolate cream cakes) Ravenhill’s need to shock diminishes what has gone before.

And, when Franz takes a subsuming, cannibalistic bite from his brother’s corpse, the effect is risibly nauseating rather than politically powerful.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (020 7565 5000) to March 21st (£10-£25)